Tank-howitzers are, in recent modern weapons technology, subjected to ever increasing demands with respect to range and firing velocity. The physical size of such weapons, in particular their weight, height, length and width must be maintained within certain limits. Moreover, in designing such weapons one strives to design the weapon in such a way that it can be used with all types of projectiles and propellant charges of a particular caliber. A known armored vehicle turret arrangement is disclosed in co-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,324 which is incorporated herein by reference. This known arrangement, however, requires manual loading and crew of at least three operators.
Another known arrangement is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,136,212 which discloses an automatic loading system for a turret gun which includes a downwardly extending tunnel via which the ammunition units must be transported to the gun turret. Such an arrangement is not suitable for a gun turret for a tank or armored vehicle, because sufficient space for such an arrangement is not available in such a vehicle so that the arrangement is suitable only for being used in Naval artillery, that is in ships. Moreover, the loading arrangement is quite complex requiring at least ten different loading steps.